Our
Story
Once, upon a rescue horse, everything changed.
After fifteen years of working with unwanted, neglected, abused, and aggressive horses, there was one horse who changed how Ryan worked with all the rest. Starling was a horse with a history of aggression towards humans and was passed from the feed lot to foster homes. After a year of working with her from a place of quietness, consistency, and honesty, Starling was able to do what horses naturally do- reflect back those traits that were being shown to her. Starling became a different horse. She was kind and gentle to handle on the ground, gave riding lessons to children, and went to horse shows and earned many placements, giving her handlers the chance to say, "Once, upon a rescue horse, I won a blue ribbon!"
After this experience with Starling, Ryan's approach to troubled horses the last decade became less about a focus on the horse's behavior, and more about a focus on how we humans show up to the work. With horse after horse since then, Ryan has found that showing up as our best self has more impact on what horses learn from us than any technique he's ever applied before. This is the foundation of horse human work we do at OUR. Following the training of Mark Rashid, we agree that “True horsemanship is developed in the mindful quality of everything we do—not just in the quality of everything we do with our horses.”
Hi, I'm Ryan.
Once Upon a Rescue grew out of my dedication to turning the lives of unwanted horses around- a commitment to the idea that even if a horse was once rescued, it does not need to be handled as if it is fragile and damaged for the rest of it's life, no matter how troubled it used to be. By retraining horses and offering them a quieter way to be with people, they can develop the skills and mindset that allows them to be successful in a human's world- and over the course of the last 25 years of working with horses, investing in my own education, and in teaching other humans, I believe it starts with working on ourselves that helps our horses, not the other way around.
I'm the director of all programs here at OUR. I have been teaching horses and horse people in lessons and camps for over two decades. I am a licensed elementary school teacher with eight years of in school experience. My passion for teaching lies in helping students connect the things they learn in lessons to their whole life experiences. I teach mostly adult and advanced youth students.
(This is Turbo!)

Meet the team!

dallas
Student instructor + Equine Somatic Coaching
I have over 10 years of experience in the horse world, ranging from teaching youth fun and safe horsemanship out on Colorado trails to hunter/jumper. Horses + human connection is a north star in my world, and I use every chance I can find to facilitate that connection. In addition to teaching youth students lessons, I offer Equine Somatic coaching, you can read more about that here.